Anyone have parents with TMS?..

Hi Everyone,

As I've learned more about TMS, I also see it in my parents and some of the pain they've experienced. It's funny how if you are an anxious person, worrier, goodist, or perfectionist(or maybe NOT so funny), that you can almost always see these traits in one or both of your parents. It's almost like you've inherited it. Anyone else?

E. Lynn

 

I'm sure that my parents had TMS. Mom had frequent migraines and anxiety, while Dad had back pain.
Both had financial worries, during the 1930s Great Depression while I was a boy. They divorced and I felt anger from that.
Their pains were from TMS but they didn't know it at the time, and are both since long deceased.
My journaling about my childhood anger and other repressed emotions led me to understand my parents better
and to forgive them, which led to my own back pain leaving me.

Dr. Sarno says we can inherit our parents and even grandparents' TMS even when we are in our mother's womb.

The thing is to discover what those repressed emotions are. Then our subconscious stops the pain.

 

Everyone's parents had TMS. I assume that E. Lynn meant to strike up a nice conversation on others' experiences.

My mom had severe migraines, and my dad had every TMS symptom I can think of. He was the toughest one in the family who went out and worked 2 and 3 jobs to keep our family going. He didn't have time for emotions, and so he had TMS. He doesn't know he had TMS, but he did. In order to keep his family going, he had to push through his pains and responsibilities, necessitating his symptoms.

Dr. Sarno said that he admired his patients for this. They suffered from trying to be good and responsible people. I agree.

Tis hell to be good, fun to be bad, but not so fun to be in hell, so be good!

Steve

 

Everyone's parents had TMS? Are you trying to say that everyone has TMS?

 

Oh don't get me started.....
The funny thing is that just two days ago I had some quality time with my 73 year old dad. After having explained TMS several times before with him, he finally confessed that he suspected that most of the issues he had suffered from through the years (back, stomach, itches, etc.) were probably psychosomatic..... I planted the seed more than a year ago and last week it finally sprouted.
My mom knows that her neck, shoulder, arm and leg problems are strongly related to emotions. I sometimes treat her with a simple form of triggerpoint therapy, but I always talk with her about what emotions are brewing during such a session. Last week I got most of the pain out of her arm. Ten minutes later she said the pain was back. I asked what she was thinking about and she confessed she was thinking about a sister-in-law that made a nasty remark at her that day....
Well, to stay on topic. Yes my parents have TMS, my father because he is pretty introvert and had a stressful youth and working life, my mother because she is the typical care-taker. I inherited (copied?) both traits, so there you go...

 

Anne Walker I remember you, where have you been? Doing better I hope. I'm not trying to say everyone has TMS, I'm saying everyone has TMS. There isn't a person alive that isn't experiencing or hasn't experienced a body-effect, or needed an external obsessive-diversion, that didn't come from an overwhelming sensation. Emotions (from thoughts) cause problems with: sleep, anxiety, depression, skin, digestion, vision, breathing, pain, blood pressure, hearing, temperature, immune system, phobias, workaholism, OCD, panic, procrastination, fear and anger: "franger"...etc......etc....

If anyone can find someone who hasn't had at least one of these, I would like to speak to them to see at what point they went insane. CG Jung stated, "show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." He was referring to the fact that everyone has something that necessitates a persona-superego, and everyone has health problems except psychotic people.

Thich Nhat Hanh also wrote, "If you're not in touch with pain, you're not in touch with life."

No one can always express his or her concerns perfectly all the time without needing to repress something (especially since repression is automatic, it isn't consciously chosen). If by chance someone has psychosis, they won't be experiencing bodily-symptoms. Then at that point you need someone like Dr. Jung to help them find their sanity again, and to return to bodily symptoms.

Then comes the question of why people become psychotic. Some would say that it's because they don't care, but I would contend that it's because they cared too much, were hurt too much by past separation, and so they shut down their rational function--decided to disconnect from reasoning to protect their hearts from deeper pain. I'm sure there are other reasons but that's one reason.

Then comes along the person that seems to care for everyone (I referred to in GPD as goodist-itus, and the smiling disease). Those are the ones that N. Maharaj said were the most self-centered selfish people. So who's crazier? The non-carer or the over-carer? Which one is needier? Both are similar; they've just decided to use a different mechanism for coping.

Everyone has TMS, and everyone's parents had/have TMS. Now--the degrees will vary in intensity, magnitude and duration. And their methods for coping may have been different. As Gigalos inferred here in his last line, "inherited (copied)?" We mimic more often what we see in our parents, so people get TMS confused with genetics. TMS is not genetic. TMS is a coping mechanism chosen by the individual.

Balance is the key to a great life of meaning and joy. We don't have to live lives of simply daily-coping. Whether it's insanity, neurosis, psychosis, or an infinite array of TMS symptoms, the poison chosen is the one that kills the pain of heartache. Meaning is the antidote to the poison of coping.

"TMS is universal." John Sarno, MD

Steve

 

I have one guy at work who clearly has a problem in this field, schizophrenic that is. I was told that in 25 years he has only called in sick once.

 

"Very interesting, very interesting"

- Shultz, Hogan's Heroes

Makes me wonder whether repression is an innate neuro-chemical mechanism built into our brains based on survival instincts? Or is it a learned behavior we learn from our cultural environment and upbringing? Nature vs. Nuture.

Sometimes you say the most suggestive things, Steve! I wonder if a social zoologist might be able to sort this one out?

 

Also remember, that just because a person never misses work doesn't mean they're not suffering from something. Some people grind through life, never knowing why they are tired, or in pain, or whatever.

Every time I brought up pain, Dr. McKenzie would mention schizophrenia. I didn't know why until he defined it for me, then it suddenly dawned on me why it pertained to TMS.

I had an example in GPD that got cut out in editing, about a guy who died on his 100th birthday, and had never missed a day of work in his life. 70 straight years. But I'm sure he had TMS of some kind, at some point. But he lived a good life.

 

"I know nothing!" Schultzee

Repression is a survival tool. It helps us interact with one another without killing each other. If we don't repress our impulses, id would run rampant, killing, raping, pooping.

A bowel movement is an impulse, and the first time a child learns shame in life. So, repression of an impulse to avoid shame is one reason to repress, and not going to jail (rejection by society) is another reason to repress an impulse.

McKenzie's discovery of this was groundbreaking, and it began with potty training. The first time we learn there are outside observers in lur life is around 2 yos, with potty training and walking, etc. It's like, "hey, there are other people watching me, what I do!" Shame is born along with the need to repress. Babies don't repress anything. Shame is the most painful of all emotions. So to survive in society we naturally repress. Not only to live among others, but to avoid our shame. Remember, ego sees itself as separate from the whole. To hide shame it needs to pretend it didn't want, or doesn't hate, or need to know, etc. But what it doesn't see is that we're all the same in our shame and needs.

 

Balance. It always seems to come down to that! I agree that we all experience some level of mind/body effect but I thought that TMS was a little more than a description of that mechanism at work. I thought the syndrome part of it was when we tip the balance in an unhealthy direction to the point where we are creating such a distraction with the pain/anxiety that we are not living as fulfilled, happy and relatively pain free life as we could. We all get drunk if we drink enough alcohol but we are not all alcoholics. I do not expect that I will never experience pain again due to emotional conflict and repression, but I do expect that it will not rule and dominate my life anymore. If we do all have TMS then perhaps there is another term to describe the world I used to be trapped in. I have known several extremely happy and resilient people who have been blessed with the ability to live life with genuine enthusiasm and gusto. I know that they have not ever experienced pain in the way that I have. I know because we have discussed it often and they try their best to be empathetic but truly have no idea what it is like. I know life is not designed to be fair, but it used to puzzle me why some experience so much pain and others pretty much none in comparison. Now I have my answer. Its whatever that thing is that I do that keeps me focused on the pain to the exclusion of everything else. Perhaps we all do have TMS but certainly some of us have a whole lot more of it!! HaHa And yes, Steve, thanks, I am doing so much better.

 

Gigalos I applaud you for helping your parents to recognise and accept their TMS. I can only watch on as my Dad suffers terribly with his TMS pain. He is a man who is unable to express his feelings, other than to fly off the handle in a rage about nothing several times a day. As a child (and adult) I always walked on eggshells around him. Luckily since starting my TMS healing journey I have learned to forgive him for being the angry man he is, and have stopped resenting him for not being like other fun Dads. I would dearly love to sit down with him some day and explain his symptoms are TMS, but I fear this would be too painful for him, so will stick to his safe favourite topics of Verdi and Puccini instead.

Steve, speaking of pooping and shame… I watched a very funny episode of 'First Dates' on TV recently, where the actor was taken to a restaurant where food was only tasted but not actually eaten. Staving with hunger, he escaped to a nearby service station and ate a dodgy pie, which resulted in him having a plumbing disaster. He fished a change of pants from a charity bin (several sizes too small for him) and upon entering the restaurant to confront his date. she looking confused asked him why he was so long and what he was doing with the silly pants on. He feeling exasperated and humiliated asked her "do you want the truth, do you want the truth", and after her reply of "yes' he exclaimed " I shat my pants"! She bolted, but a curious bystander gave him her number as he was so brave!

 

I am in the process of counceling my mom on TMS and her fibromialgia. It's slowly working as she's beginning to accept the diagnosis...

 

Colly, LOL, "shat". Wonder if that will appear in the next Oxford dictionary for a past tense of "shit". And joking aside, that is interesting about shame/pooping. I get horrified when I realize someone is taking a dump in a stall next to me. "Don't they know any better?!" my superego screeches. LOL

Interesting discussion! So, my brother, a paranoid schizophrenic has no physical problems (overlooking his morbid obesity that is). In the rare case of a headache he's told me he takes an aspirin. As in one. Actually, he we are all amazed he is still alive, at 59, given his atrocious eating habits and lack of exercise. I think his happy pills have helped.

Both my parents are deceased. Dad, dropped dead of his one and only heart attack at 53. Mom at 70 after years of stress eating and diabetes.

My in-laws could be a case study in TMS. Father in law in early onset dementia (he could do the keynote at a "how to suppress emotions" seminar. Mother in law has gone blind in one eye and yeah…can't see out of the other. Ditto for her hearing. Great difficulty with swallowing too. Very sad.

 

Wow, what a great bunch of replies. This discussion is so interesting. I guess the old saying, "You are what you eat," could be changed into, "You are what you think," and how you were raised can be HUGE.
Before reading Dr. Sarno, I never really thought about what a huge role our parents had in our lives when it comes to our subconscious. I mean, it's obvious our parents were the most influential people in our lives, but it's crazy how much more there is to that relationship than just genetics and nurturing.
It's even more serious when you think about how you influence your own children. I've always tried to hide at least half of any anxiety or worry I've had from my children, hoping that flaw in my character wouldn't rub off on them. Seems to be working so far I've gotten a lot more mellow as I've grown older, thankfully.

 

Then, it sure sounds, Steve, like repression is something we learn from out cultural environments and upbringing. And that's the way it gets transmitted from generation to generation, not via our DNA. Therefore, I'd venture to assert that the level (and kinds) of repression must vary from one culture to another? Starting to move closer to 19th century race theory and Rassenkunde I fear! But at some point it sure sounds as though it might get encoded and transmitted genetically too.

 

I read this too in James Alexander's TMS book, where he explains that being part of a social group increases our survival chances, and so rejection and isolation can equal death.

Current research also demonstrates that people who are connected socially live longer, so there is truth there even in modern society.

 

I'm living in Japan temporarily right now. They have these incredible toilets in public restrooms with lots of buttons that do amazing things. (Yes, I've tried them all.) One of the buttons has musical notes on it, and I discovered that when pressed it makes a loud flushing sound so that no one else can hear what you are doing in your stall.

I suspect that there may be high rates of TMS in Japan because it appears to be a country of goodists. People are incredibly polite, considerate, and modest, which makes it a wonderful place to visit. It makes me wonder, too, about cultural differences and the rate of TMS.

 

This seem to be in agreement with Professor Robert Sapolsky's findings in his studies of primate behavior in Kenya. Socially isolated individuals (who have a hard time differentiating between near and immediate threats) have more ailments and die younger.

 

To all people who try hard to convince their parents that they also have TMS: don't overdo it, as it may make you angry and sad when they constantly reject the theory.
It will take time and some people have simply built such a strong fence over the years that it is almost impossible to break through. Trying too hard to convince them may even have the opposite effect.
I mentioned some findings about myself and my bodily reactions once and a while to my parents. I had the luck that I was able to slowly convince my mother by connecting stress and physical problems during my sessions with her. Luckily my father witnessed this from the side-line, which much have slowly changed his opinion about his own physical problems. Also from time to time I mentioned how it worked for me personally and other people in my vicinity. And what helped most probably was that they have witnessed me slowly changing for the better during the last 2 years.

by the way, love the story Colly!